Another one of the Sloan-funded projects from the RFP held this year is being managed by James Scott from the University of Toronto. It’s entitled “To design improved testing methods for common building materials”. The Co-PIs on the project are Eric Savory (University of Western Ontario), Richard Summerbell (Sporometrics Inc.), and John Pogacar (Anderson Building …
The dates of May 22-24th were set today at the end of the VAMPS/QIIME workshop in Boulder (more about that later). The dates have been choose to coordinate with ASM 2013, which is in Denver from May 18-21st. Anyone attending ASM should just be able to take a shuttle up to Boulder for the Sloan …
The second new project to receive funding from the Sloan foundation is a project entitled “Analysis of the ICU room environment as a source of microorganisms colonizing the GI tract of premature infants”. This project is being managed by Jill Banfield at UC Berkeley, along with her Co-PIs; Michael Morowitz (University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine) …
The Sloan Foundation has just announced funding for another two projects, we’ll be posting details here. The first project is called the “Hospital Microbiome Study” and will be managed by Jack Gilbert (University of Chicago) and Captain Benjamin Kirkup at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Check out the project website here.
Heard about an interesting paper today (sadly not open access) describing airflow simulations in an aerosol chamber. Basically they showed that if you release bugs from a mannequin, they spread all over the room… up to 3.5 meters away. A worthwhile study, but not something that wasn’t known already. What made this get so much …
The Virginia Tech group has published another paper looking at the impacts of indoor environmental conditions on microbes. In this case, it’s potentially a key clue to the on-going search for an explanation to the seasonality of influenza puzzle. It’s not just airborne humidity but also the droplet. composition that matter. Past efforts to find …
Going for a walk or drive in the country and viewing the fall colors when the leaves turn in the Boston area is a favorite pastime of residents of and visitors to the area. Leaf mold associated with autumn leaves in Massachusetts may have gotten into the indoor environment of the New England Compounding Center …
Last year as part of microBEnet’s mandate to perform outreach associated with the microbiology of the built environment we sponsored and managed an undergraduate research project. In this we isolated organisms from the built environment and then sequenced several reference genomes. This work is currently being prepared in a series of genome announcement publications. (see …
Here are a few of the talks from the built environment session of the Lake Arrowhead Microbial Genomes meeting (previous blog post here). This session was sponsored by microBEnet. James Meadow, from the BioBE Center. Jason Stajich, part of the MoBEDAC project. Susana Remold from the University of Louisville.
Destaillats et al 2011. “Secondary pollutants from ozone reactions with ventilation filters and degradation of filter media additives”, Atmospheric Environment, vol. 45, no. 21, p. 3561-3568, 2011. Can be freely downloaded from LBL.gov web site as LBNL-4829E.pdf (692.59 KB) http://iepubs.lbl.gov/publications/author/22
